amelia peabody

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once you get into Book 3 of the Amelia Peabody series, The Mummy Case, you start picking up steam for the long haul of the bulk of all these books. Hands down, the best aspect of it is that Amelia and Emerson’s young son Ramses joins them for the first time in Egypt, and therefore starts taking his place as a primary character in the family’s adventures. Much like with Book 2, though, aside from Ramses starting to become his catastrophically precocious self, the rest of this story doesn’t stand out as much for me plot-wise. There’s certainly plenty of intrigue surrounding the murder of an antiquities dealer and the disappearance and reappearance of a mummy case, as well as the usual colorful cast of characters that populates any Amelia Peabody adventure.

What really sells this one for me, though, is all the character interaction–particularly with Ramses. He’s still too twee as of this book, what with Peters still writing out all his dialogue with a lisp–but he starts exhibiting the tendencies that make him quite the little holy terror for his parents to raise. The bit with the lion in this book, in particular, is gold. I also absolutely adore that Ramses, in emulation of his parents, carries out his own tiny excavation that turns out to be quite a bit more important than either of his parents expect. Four stars.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After the awesomeness that is Crocodile on the Sandbank, the mighty opening round of the Amelia Peabody series, a reader might wonder how Elizabeth Peters could possibly have packed more awesome into these books. The answer: by the introduction of Amelia and Emerson’s son, the “catastrophically precocious” Walter Peabody Emerson, better known by his nickname of Ramses.

The opening of this book remains one of my favorite bits in the entire series. It’s four years after the events of Book 1, and Amelia and Emerson have been staying at home in England raising their small son rather than risking him by a return to Egypt. In a quick little sequence of anecdotes, Amelia provides a delightful little portrait of exactly what this kid is like, from how he started to talk at a very early age to how he delighted in his father reading grisly accounts of mummies to him, and most of all in digging up bones out of the garden. He’s a bit too twee at this early age, though, as his dialogue is written out with some baby pronunication that makes him a bit hard to read. I was cheerfully willing to overlook that though for the giggle factor of young Ramses interrupting a tea party his mother is having–by bringing Amelia a particularly filthy femur, and horrifying all the other women present. Muaha.

Sadly, Ramses is not actually much in this book. The main gist of the plot involves one Lady Baskerville coming to beg Emerson for assistance, for her husband, himself a well-known excavator, has died in the middle of digging into a new tomb. Lady Baskerville wants Emerson to continue the job–and if at all possible, to investigate the mystery of her husband’s death and other strange circumstances that have surrounded their entire dig. And it’s certainly an entertaining mystery, notable for setting up a lot of the standard elements of an Amelia Peabody book: murder, a budding young romance, and someone (or multiple someones) being attracted passionately to Emerson! One other plot element is introduced here as well that will resonate through several of the following novels: the Emersons’ acqusition of the cat Bastet.

So even though the main plot doesn’t stand out for me as much as with the rest of the series, there are still a whole bunch of important things introduced here that set up books to come. For this one, four stars.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my all-time favorite authors is Elizabeth Peters, a.k.a. Barbara Michaels–and of her many, many works, my all-time favorite hands down is the Amelia Peabody series. Which starts off with a mighty roar in Crocodile on the Sandbank, a book I can go back to again and again. And do!

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, they’re the adventures of a husband and wife team of Egyptologists, set in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. Book 1 introduces spinster Amelia Peabody, who has set out to tour Egypt following the death of her father and her inheritance of a quite credible fortune from him. During her travels, she takes lovely young Evelyn Forbes under her wing, and the two of them join forces to see the great sites of Egypt.

Cue introduction to the Emerson brothers, Walter and Radcliffe–though the latter detests his given name, and from this book and all throughout the series, he is known to the reader as simply Emerson. Walter’s a gentle and charming fellow, in direct contrast to his obstreperous brother. It should be no surprise to anyone that Evelyn takes to Walter, while Amelia herself clashes with Emerson. And this, my children, lays down the beginning of a long and lively relationship.

Amelia and Emerson are absolutely stunning together. Emerson is bullheaded, tactless, and rude, and has no patience whatsoever for interfering females–while Amelia will have absolutely none of this nonsense, and gives Emerson back every bit as good as he puts forth. That their relationship really gets underway when she has to nurse him out of severe illness should not be taken as anything so plebian as the standard “heroine must nurse hero back to health” romance trope–because Peters plays it splendidly.

As if this weren’t enough (and it’s quite a bit of awesome), there is of course a mystery to solve. Not long after Amelia and Evelyn take up with the Emersons, the dig site at which they’re working is visited by nothing less than what seems to be an ambulatory mummy. There’s murder, assault, and shady suitors. I love it all. I love it all so much. (heart)

The story’s written in first person, with the schtick that it’s the first of Amelia’s many journals, written during her lifetime. Peters gives her a very florid style (Amelia is quite fond of repeatedly mentioning Emerson’s “sapphirine” eyes, for example), but given that Peters is deliberately paying homage to H.R. Haggard and similar authors, it’s very much in theme for what she’s doing. So stick with it, and look out to the end for the inevitable proposal of marriage scene, which ranks as one of my favorite marriage proposals in a novel ever.

And trust me, it’s so very much not a spoiler that Amelia and Emerson get married. In fact, I adore that they go straight to getting married, and clear the way for the length of the series to focus on their married life and their adventures together. Don’t ever let anybody tell you that you can’t base a series on a married couple, folks–because Amelia and her beloved Emerson say otherwise. And you don’t want to argue with a woman with a parasol! Five stars.